“Visualizing a Healthier Diet: How Imaginative Retraining Helps Reduce High-Calorie Food Cravings”

Many people want to reduce their intake of high-calorie foods, either to maintain a slim body or in an attempt to lose weight and excess fat.

A new study explores a visualization technique to help reduce high-calorie food choices among those who want to eat less, according to the journal Appetite.

The results indicated that those who imagined the high-calorie foods and then imagined getting rid of the food by pushing it, reported that they had reduced cravings for fatty foods.

Imaginal Retraining is a behavioral therapy that first attempts to induce a negative mood, then asks the individual to imagine their favorite high-calorie food, then imagine getting rid of it while doing the physical action gesture of getting rid of it.

3P technology

Another technique, known as 3P, is a three-step process that begins with pulling, pausing, and ending with pushing away.

When applying the 3P technique, the person will imagine that they are biting the food, then pause, then imagine that they are pushing the food away with a silent motion gesture.

For his part, Steffen Moritz and his colleagues, from several German universities and research centers, hypothesized that the 3P method would be more effective in changing eating habits than the imaginary training method.

The trial was conducted on 1,016 participants from an online platform who were included in the study after they hoped to reduce their cravings for high-calorie foods.

They were then randomly placed into one of five groups. All subjects were shown the same pictures of different foods high in fat and calories.

The first group was the control, and the participants were asked to look at a picture. Participants in the second group were asked to look at a picture, then close their eyes and imagine zooming out.

In group three, participants engaged in imaginative retraining without pantomime, and participants in group four engaged in imaginative training with pantomime. Finally, the participants in the fifth group were asked to do the 3P technique.

Unexpected results

All participants then looked again at the pictures of the food and rated their level of craving for what was depicted. Contrary to what the research team expected, the results revealed that participants in the fourth group experienced the greatest decrease in cravings.

Participants in the fourth group mentally imagined images of food, in addition to doing a pantomime that depicted eliminating high-calorie foods.

Imaginative retraining

The results of the study support the effectiveness of imaginative retraining combined with the motor component and the 3P technique (pull-pause-push) compared to other methods.

Moritz and his research team conclude that imaginary retraining could be a promising treatment for obesity and recommend further studies to better understand this technique and how it can be used in a therapeutic setting.

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